Pages

Friday, 3 June 2011

Picking the right TV Subscription

Well this morning we've all just been chilling our and relaxing a bit as its been a pretty busy week for the kids so quite nice just to spend a quite morning at home.
Alice and Thomas were loving watching 'How To Train your Dragon' for about the 4th time in a week and it reminded me that I wanted to post something about this.
When I talk to friends their often surprised that we do have the full sky package and I know a lot of people a lot better of than us who think the full subscription is excessive and wasteful. However when deciding this was the package that suited us we really did take a lot of things into account, and I know that we make a saving every month by paying Sky that little bit extra.
Our package includes our phone line rental, free evening and weekend land line calls, standard broadband and Sky TV including Sky Sports and Movies. This all comes in at around £60 a month so is admittedly one of our bigger bills.
Now I know most people dont justify the Sports and the Movies but we worked out that in our preSky days we would've gone to the cinema as a couple at least once a month, and would undoubted go more (and certainly not less) now that we have the children so this is a saving of at least £10 a month, our bigger movie spend however was between buying films and Blockbuster. We would often buy 2 or 3 cheap DVDs a months costing us about £15 and then while we didn't use blockbuster too often it certainly totaled around £40 a year so another £3 a month.
So on having the movies alone we save around £27 a month compared to the old days!

Then the sports, now I wont lie neither of us ever spend hundred on going to see live sport, but we both like the cricket and my other half is a football fan. While we didn't used to have to directly pay money to see sports beforehand if a match was (as it inevitably was) on Sky it did mean a trip to the local pub.
If this was to meet a few friends then you can obviously except a few pints these days to come in at about £6 and if we went as a family then it would be a lot more as you know what kids are like..they seem to want feeding and watering too!!
So again around a £24 a month saving minimum

So between the movies and the sports we save £51 a month, take this away from our sky subscription and you've got £9, now as far as I'm aware you cant even pay your BT Line rental for this.

So in conclusion, sometime you have to remember that the obvious ways to save arnt always actually the best!

2 comments:

An interesting post. As you say, when you break it down like this it does seem like a good proposition. I think the problem most people have is that they don't do this and still do the other things.

I'm not sure the experience of going to the cinema or to the pub watching sport with friends entirely equates. However, in the way you have explained it, and if you stick to your original thinking and it does balance out like this it seems like a great idea.

I'm sure people could make the most of their money if they thought about the benefits and trade offs of situations like this as fully as you obviously have.

Hi Oliver, your defiantly right that theres isn't a direct comparison between what we used to do and what we do now. If I'm honest I dont think we would save money this way if we hadn't had the children yet as going out would still have more of an appeal. For us now this gives us the means of enjoying the things we like as a family and still me make some savings so that we can go out but to enjoy things the children will get more out of likes trips to the farm/swimming etc

About Me

I'm a 24 year old mum of two trying my best to 'not quite keep up with the Jones's ' while managing our very limited family budget.I hope my blog might give you that sense of joy you get from finding that gem in the bargain bin.